Roughly 100 miles west of Palm Springs lies a land roughly 1000 years away.

You get there by driving through a vortex as surreal as any extraterrestrial contact in the desert. Get off Highway 91 in Buena Park and make sure your GPS guides you to 7662 Beach Blvd. or you could wind up in the wrong century. Make a wrong turn on Beach and you could enter the early 20th century at Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition and Dinner Gala, the 19th century at the Knott’s Berry Farm’s Old West Ghost Town, the 18th century at the Pirate’s Dinner Adventure or even the age of dinosaurs at the Clark’s Interpretive Center and Paleontology Museum.

You want to head into the 11th century at Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament for a summer adventure that is part “Game of Thrones,” part Olympics spectacle and part company store.

I took my family there recently for my elder son, Clay’s birthday because he’s a big “Game of Thrones” fan and, well, I think he was looking forward to the opportunity to drink beer out of a medieval stein. But he had another motivation that was absolutely Machiavellian.

My extended family is extremely close when it comes to getting together for birthdays and major holidays. As my sister said at my mother’s 90th birthday party just last weekend, we grew up gathering at least once a month with my grandparents, aunts, cousins, cousins-in-laws and occasional stragglers in the neighborhood. But, as my sister also said, some of us have had “our ups-and-downs” and some of those “downs” have been comparable to the War of the Roses.

So Clay thought, if we could assemble our family and get everyone to cheer common rivals, we could have a special birthday party. It was kind of the “Godfather” theory of the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

So we drove to Buena Park and successfully made it past the Pirate’s Dinner Adventure by turning left into the giant toy castle that is Medieval Times.

Upon entry, we found ourselves transported to an 11th century photo op. We were given green paper crowns and told we were part of the Green Team, which I thought that was pretty cool. I could get behind the idea of yelling “Go green!”

I noticed a guy in a robe with a different kind of crown, so I asked, “Who are you?” With a tone that reminded me of the Lone Ranger, he replied, “I’m the king.” So I guessed he wasn’t going to take our picture.

The actual photographer posed my family (plus a straggler from my son’s animation studio who replaced my indisposed younger son) with a young woman wearing a tiara. She was the Princess Catalina over whom the knights would soon do battle. Oddly, she didn’t look as regal as the straggler, who like my son, wore dark glasses to prove he was in show biz.

After photos were taken, we were led into a souvenir room featuring everything from mugs to suits of armor. Clay’s girlfriend, Kendra, bought my mother an LED sword (or maybe it was a wand) and it made my homeopathic-fueled mom feel she could still lead the charge as the family matriarch.

Color-coded

The color of our crowns determined where we would sit in the arena. We were herded into the green seats with dinner settings that included napkins containing the menu and information about how we could share our experience on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. The first course was Dragon Blood, which was actually tomato bisque.

The announcer, playing the part of the chancellor, introduced the Andalusian horses with flowery language (“He’s a magnificent stallion, but beneath the surface lies a gentle spirit”). They obviously wanted to show how they truly love these horses and aren’t just exploiting them for ticket sales.

A Black and White Knight gave a speech I couldn’t understand until he said, “Are you ready?” He was quite theatrical and probably would have been a star on Broadway (as opposed to an amusement park) if he had been born 70 years earlier.

The Black and White Knight introduced six other knights of different colored crowns and they all rode their magnificent Andalusians on the manufactured dirt while crowds cheered their champions.

This is what reminded me of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. The fans cheered and waved souvenir flags for their chivalrous knights as enthusiastically as the Olympics crowd cheered and waved flags for their nations’ boxers. The pageantry of the knights and their squires passing single file before the king also reminded me of the Olympics opening ceremony.

The horses did some tricks for the crowd, including great leaps, trotting in place and raising their front legs in a “Hi-O-Silver”-type thing. Maybe the king reminded the horses of the Lone Ranger, too.

The royal falconer demonstrated “the sport of kings,” in which a falcon flies around the arena and lands on the falconer’s arms. The chancellor warned us not to reach up and grab the falcon, so the routine didn’t deteriorate into a “Saturday Night Live” sketch.

After a four-course, utensil-free meal including chicken, corn and a pastry, the pageantry continued with the ancient tradition of announcing birthdays, anniversaries and, in a new twist, honeymoons. And yes, a couple was spending their honeymoon at Medieval Times.

The action begins

Then a Knight of the North offered a gift to the king. In return, he wanted the king’s daughter to become the wife of his king. If the king spurned his offer, the knight said, his people would be subjected to misery and death.

The king, being noble, refused this offer and ordered a competition among his six knights in which the winner would fight the Knight of the North. The knights began jousting and fighting in hand-to-hand combat — not just for their honor, but for their lives! These were battles to the death!

Finally, it came down the yellow and green knights. Our Green Knight had beautiful long hair while the Yellow Knight was bald, so it was obvious who the good guy was. The Green Knight took more blows than Timothy Bradley and kept getting up. But finally, he could get up no longer and you had to wonder, was this green defeat a victory for industrial waste? Would it result in the destruction of our environment, climate change and ultimately, the need for water reduction?

Fortunately, the Yellow Knight proved himself a good guy in battling the Knight of the North. He seemingly cut his evil opponent in half, although the Knight of the North survived somehow and vowed never to tell his king he couldn’t have Princess Catalina. So he was sent to live in exile in a castle, which must have made the widows of the king’s vanquished knights rather envious.

Somehow, it was a satisfying evening. Even though our knight was dead, everybody on our team was happy it wasn’t our blood left on the ground. We left Medieval Times knowing we had experienced one of our best family get-togethers ever.

The good news is that Medieval Times is now offering buy-one, get-one-free tickets exclusively to Desert Sun readers who can give them the discount code of REIGN-BOGO. Tickets are normally $61.95 plus fees or $36.95 plus fees for children 12 and under. Go Medievaltimes.com or call (888) WE-JOUST. The offer expires Aug. 31.